


Hearsay

by ThisShitMakesMeHard (Face_of_Poe)



Series: From Helmand to Harlan - Holidays with Tim and Raylan [4]
Category: Justified
Genre: April Fools' Day, Gen, Post-Series, Raylan might be a bit insecure, this one's just silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 01:21:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5355638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/ThisShitMakesMeHard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a new deputy in Miami. Raylan's path never quite manages to cross the new guy, but he's kind of okay with that because the rest of the office won't shut up about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearsay

**Author's Note:**

> Set within a few months of the very end of the show.  
> And uh, Dan's still the chief deputy. I was a bit fuzzy on whether or not Sutter had taken over, but I like Dan, so. Oh well.

“You hear we got a replacement for Martin?” Raylan glanced sideways at Kathy as he pulled to a stop at a red light. “’Bout time. Thought of him wasting his days away on the beach while we’re short staffed, been brutal.”

He’d never been much of one for the beach, but he took her point. “Hm. Who they shufflin’ up to the fugitives business to make way for the new guy?”

She shook her head. “No one. Sending the newbie straight up the totem pole.”

“What? Not even an obligatory stint in prisoner transpo while he… she?... gets the lay of the land?”

“Guess not,” Kathy shrugged, expression unreadable behind a pair of oversized sunglasses. “We’re on orientation duty next week.”

Raylan stared, nonplussed, until the car behind them honked. He turned back to front and proceeded through the green light and swung around to get on the 195 entrance ramp. “A fucking ride-along? Are we being punished?”

“It’s you,” Kathy allowed, “so… probably?”

 

 

April dawned in stereotypical dreary fashion the next Wednesday. Raylan shook off his hat as he entered the office, grumpy, and his mood didn’t much improve to find the office abuzz with gossip about the replacement body for the desk three down from his own. Kathy’s tune had changed considerably, apparently with the revelation upon his arrival that, “He’s _cute_.”

Raylan grunted and shot her a look – she laughed – before collapsing into his chair and spinning to turn on his computer. “What’ve we got?”

“A cute new colleague.”

“Mm, not what I meant.” But he glanced down the row of cubicles anyway, only to find that Martin’s empty desk was still unoccupied. “Is he also invisible?”

Kathy rolled her chair over to his space and tossed a folder on his desk, their bail-jumper du jour. “Think Dan took him on a tour of the building, obligatory meet and greets, you know.”

“Must’ve missed ‘em.”

“If you were ever here on time…”

“Noo,” Raylan countered, “and get in the way of your chance to make nice with the fresh meat?”

She picked the folder back up and smacked him with it.

 

 

Dan and Cute-New-Guy didn’t resurface in the next forty-five minutes, and then Raylan and Kathy were on their way to Coral Gables. “So are we off the hook for babysitting duty?” Raylan asked hopefully, wondering if they were going to get a call from Dan halfway there ordering them back to pick up their supposed charge.

“I don’t know why you’re so opposed,” Kathy leaned her head back against the seat and turned to give him a reproving look. “It’s not like he’s fresh out of Glynco.”

“I can’t just jump right into the field with new people; I need time to build a certain rapport, or else they think I’m a total asshole.”

“Instead of only kind of an asshole?”

A half-smile quirked his lips. “Exactly. And what kind of suck-up must this guy be to jump right over the obligatory new-guy hazing period of prison transpo and judicial protection bullshit, straight into the highly sought-after routine of hunting down Miami’s enterprising criminal elements?”

“Maybe he’s just a badass, and would be wasted on prisoner transport.”

“Well… did he _look_ like a badass?”

Kathy shrugged. “Dunno. I was too preoccupied by the cuteness.”

“Ugh.”

 

 

Their trip to Coral Gables yielded no results, but they made up for two fruitless hours waiting around for their guy’s roommate to show up (invited them in to look around, and asked if the marshals could make him pay his share of the rent if they _did_ find him) by taking a long lunch at a deceptively good hole-in-the-wall seafood place on the route back.

When they got back at quarter after one, Tina had fallen into the Cute-New-Guy camp, and she came to perch on the edge of Kathy’s desk and discuss it. Much to Raylan’s chagrin, as this put her right next to his desk as well, and Tina was about fifteen years too old to be using such phrases as, “He’s _dreamy_.”

A clandestine glance confirmed that his desk was still empty, and Raylan was starting to wonder if he existed at all. “Dan might be on to something, keeping him away from the wolves – or should I say cougars?”

He ducked the smack that time.

“Chief got called down to talk with some AUSAs, sent him off with Sutter.”

“This guy got a name?” Raylan sighed. “I don’t have something to call him soon, he might be stuck irrevocably in my head as _cute-new-guy_ , and soon as I call him that to his face I’m going to need a transfer to Alaska.”

Charlie stuck his head over the cubicle wall on Kathy’s other side. “I heard he was a shooter.”

“Well, we already got one of those,” Tina exclaimed, finally landing a smack on Raylan’s shoulder.

“Ha, ha, ha,” he drawled, and then cut her off when she opened her mouth. “Hold on, I’m not done. _Ha_.”

“Not like Raylan, all Wyatt Earp,” Charlie waved her off. Raylan scowled. “Like, a marksman. Sniper. Military type.” 

Tina and Kathy exchanged grins; Raylan put his head down on his desk with an audible _thunk_.

 

 

Sutter wasn’t back yet with Cute-New-Sniper-Guy when Raylan left to pick Willa up from pre-k. His accidental avoidance of his mysterious new colleague continued upon his return. Sutter had returned, and a US Marshals jacket was slung over Martin’s old chair, a water bottle sitting on the desk, but still no one to claim them.

“Missed him again,” Kathy commiserated, digging around in her desk for a pack of crayons and a coloring book she started keeping on hand for Willa.

“I shall try to contain my disappointment,” Raylan assured her as he dragged an extra chair over for Willa to perch on while she waited for him to finish up. “Is he bringing in the number one single-handedly? Dismantling regional crime syndicates before quittin’ time?”

“Tina and Pedro took him down to the cafeteria for coffee.”

“…Oh.”

Kathy wheeled around to Raylan’s desk and kicked him lightly with a pointy shoe. “Raylan Givens, are you _jealous_ that someone else is getting all this attention?”

“Nope,” he opened his folder on their Coral Gables guy and started mining through it for potential leads even unlikelier than the futile one this morning. “Do feel a bit bad for him, set in Tina’s sights like that.”

Sutter skidded to a halt passing by Raylan’s desk and grinned. “She might be in for a disappointment.”

“Married?” Kathy asked.

The grin widened. “Told him he was turning some heads; told me he was, and I quote, incurably gay.”

Raylan froze, blinked twice, frowned, shut his folder and looked up. “Charlie,” he whistled for the other man’s attention. “You said this guy was a military sniper?” he asked when the head appeared from across Kathy’s desk. “Army? Rangers?”

“Ah, I think so,” he said, and Sutter nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

“A Ranger sniper,” he clarified slowly. “A _gay_ Ranger sniper?” Charlie shrugged; Sutter nodded again. “Bullshit.”

“ _Raylan_!” Kathy exclaimed, appalled.

Willa sputtered an indignant “Daddy!” at his language.

“Sorry,” he assured her. “And that’s not-!”

“A gay man can’t be a Ranger?” Kathy scowled at him.

“That isn’t what I -”

“Yeah, Raylan,” a familiar voice – a familiar voice he hadn’t heard in more than four years – drawled from behind him, “Don’tcha know we’re a protected people in this modern, pluralistic society o’ours?”

Raylan huffed a soft laugh under his breath, crossed his arms, and spun around in his chair. “Jesus Christ.”

“Tim,” Tim corrected, approaching with his coffee-free hand held out, shit-eating grin firmly in place. “Gutterson.”

Raylan stared at his hand. “Why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming down here?”

Tim seemed to give it serious consideration, before offering blandly, “It was funny.” 

He took his hand, used it to pull himself to his feet rather than shaking it. “You’re an asshole.” 

“Chief was in on it.”

“Dan is also an asshole.” He couldn’t keep the silly smile off his face though as he looked the other man over. The passed time had been kind enough; the lines of his face were maybe set a little deeper, a new scar along his left jawline begged a story, but he was still free of the ever-encroaching grey from which Raylan suffered (“distinguished,” Tina called it; Kathy preferred “old.”).

“April Fools, jerk.” Raylan turned; Dan had emerged from his office and stood beside Sutter, eyeing the little gathering. “Jesus. Art told me I was crazy putting you two back together. You’ve already brought operations to a standstill.”

Charlie ducked back down into his workspace and Kathy rolled back over in to hers. “Now,” Dan looked between them, “I told Gutterson he’d normally spend some time in a low-key area while he familiarizes himself with the office, the city, but Art suggested that you’d find any and every opportunity to drag him out of the office on some hijink or other.”

“That was a very astute suggestion.”

“So just, you know,” he waved them on with a look that suggested maybe he was already second-guessing this decision, “play nice.”

“Oh,” Raylan clapped Tim on the shoulder, got a dry stare in return, “I think Gutterson can keep up.”

Dan just shook his head and walked away. When Raylan turned back around, Tim was eyeing Willa, head down and coloring and paying no mind to the hullabaloo going on around her, with an expression like he was trying to reconcile the lapsed time, the little bald baby with the five-year-old before him. “They don’t stay like that forever,” Raylan informed him sagely.

“Weird, that it’s been so long,” Tim murmured. “’Course, then I look at you and wonder that it hasn’t been longer. You’re getting old, dude.”

Kathy snorted a laugh. Raylan shot her a glare and sighed. “Seriously, did you just come to Miami to give me shit?” 

“Nope,” Tim pulled his chair out and sat down, then turned around and started opening drawers at Raylan’s desk, searching for something. “All part of an elaborate sting operation, actually.

“Some asshole never sent my bag back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Next fic (two more to go) will be in a couple days. They're both more or less done, but they're a bit, um... pivotal. Heh. So there's a lot of re-reading and second-guessing and tweaking happening.  
> Thanks for reading and the lovely comments so far.


End file.
